


The Sign

by LibbyWrites



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [6]
Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Barista Liam, Coffee Shops, Drabble, Flirting, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 11:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10189145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibbyWrites/pseuds/LibbyWrites
Summary: Not just another sleepy morning at work for Liam, thanks to Louis and Harry.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I decided to upload all my Tumblr drabbles on AO3 to have them all together in one place.
> 
> This is Drabble #06, and it wasn't a request. I just got inspired by a post I saw on the [Writers 4 Ziam](http://writers4ziam.tumblr.com/) blog. The post is [here](http://writers4ziam.tumblr.com/post/150077431074/brolininthetardis-this-is-a-coffeeshop-au)
> 
> [Here](http://elerinwen.tumblr.com/post/150317674590/so-i-came-across-this-post-on-the-writers4ziam) is my original Tumblr post in case you want to check it out and [here](http://elerinwen.tumblr.com/ask) is my ask box in case you want to request something. (My prompt lists are over [here](http://elerinwen.tumblr.com/tagged/prompts)).
> 
> Thanks for reading and please leave comments or kudos if you liked it!

[](https://ibb.co/b7Ukiv)   
  


 

It wasn’t really Liam’s fault that Netflix decided to upload an entire season of his favorite show on a Sunday night. It really wasn’t. As Liam yawned his way through his morning routine with barely a couple hours of sleep on him, his drowsy half-functioning brain tried to convince him that it really wasn’t his fault. Yeah, maybe he could’ve behaved like a normal person and watched one or two episodes a day but how the hell do people do that? Patience was never really his forte. He really had to binge watch all eight episodes in one sitting. He had to. It was Netflix’s fault for tempting him. And it wasn’t like he had any other plans, right? His social life was pretty nonexistent.

He decided to blame everything bad that could happen that morning at work on the Netflix gods. Being as sleepy as he was, being a clumsy moron, and working as a barista, was probably a catastrophic combination. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t survive his morning shift unscathed.

After a commute he spent sleeping on the shoulder of some stranger, he arrived at work ten minutes late. After a quick good morning for his coworkers, Louis and Harry, he walked into the back room to change. He put on his all black uniform and his red apron and without even looking in the mirror, he walked back out, ready(ish) to work. There was no point. His hair would be an unfixable mess anyways and he was sure he looked dead on his feet.

Liam powered through the first few hours of his shift like a drone. Take order, take money, put money in register, give change, next. It was quite busy at this time of morning, the shop was pretty close to a college campus and there was an almost never ending line of people ordering their morning coffee. It was always the same routine and Liam could do it with his eyes closed. Maybe his lack of sleep made him give the wrong amount of change to a few people but he fixed the mistake himself most times.

This morning, however, wasn’t like any other morning. Maybe he had something on his face, or maybe his sleepiness was way too evident, because for some reason way too many girls giggled at him as soon as they stood in front of the register, wishing him good luck (What the hell was that about?); and way too many guys winked at him with big smiles on their faces (not counting the few that looked at him like he had just kicked a puppy). On three different occasions, random guys slipped him their number scribbled on their cups or their paper napkins. It was simply confusing. He didn’t know if the problem was his brain, making things up, or if something was actually happening and he was having trouble putting two and two together. Usually it was Louis or Harry that got the giggling girls and the winking guys and the phone numbers. He simply never got that kind of attention. Never did. Whoever told him being a barista meant scoring like never before was full of crap. He was just the token awkward nerdy guy at the shop, and most guys that actually talked to him were only interested in knowing who his hot coworkers were.

Confused as he was, the only thing he could do was take a little break as soon as the morning rush calmed down to look in the mirror. There was nothing weird on his face, thank god. His hair was indeed a mess but there was nothing he could do about that except steal some product from Louis’ locker to try to manufacture a decent looking quiff.

After three failed attempts at making himself look more presentable and washing his face to appear more human, he finally walked out of the bathroom and into the store again. The line at the register was finally gone, and he got to relax a bit for the first time since he woke up. He distracted himself chatting with Louis and Harry for a bit, who seemed to be way too chipper for some reason. They were giggling too, sharing knowing looks, which wasn’t really that weird but this time it made Liam feel like they were laughing at a joke Liam wasn’t in on. What the fuck.

“Liam, you’ve got work to do…” Louis interrupted with a smirk as Harry started talking about his weekend. Liam turned to look at the register over his shoulder and effectively, there was someone standing there. Not anyone. Oh no. Zayn was at the register, looking like the Adonis he was. No, it didn’t matter that he looked incredibly warm and cozy in grey sweatpants and some unknown band t-shirt, a full beard and disheveled hair. He was still a god and the most beautiful thing Liam had ever seen.

Liam took a second to hate his life while his idiotic friends sniggered behind him. Of course they knew he had a crush on Zayn. Of course they teased him endlessly every single time because he became a complete blushing mess every time Zayn walked through the door.

Liam threw one last menacing look at his coworkers before arming himself with as much courage as he could muster. He took a deep breath and ignoring Louis and Harry’s giggles, he walked to the register.

Fuck, Zayn was even prettier up close. He even had bags under his eyes for fuck’s sake, and he still looked GQ photoshoot ready. How was that even possible? Liam smiled through his nerves and trying not to die, he greeted Zayn as if he were any other costumer. That’s exactly what he was anyways, right? “Hi, welcome to Coffeerific, what can I offer you?” he repeated the speech, grabbing his sharpie, focusing on anything but Zayn’s face. Zayn wasn’t even watching him anyways, he was fixated right above Liam’s head. Oh, right, the sign. It was their boss’ idea, putting up a blackboard and letting customers know what the coffee of the day was. He didn’t even look at the sign anymore; after he made clear his artistic abilities were nonexistent, Harry took care of it every morning. For some reason, today’s coffee seemed to be fascinating, because Zayn was looking at it with a big smile plastered on his face, a smile that made Liam’s knees weak.

Liam patiently waited until Zayn finally looked at him again, smile bigger than before. “Mornin’, Liam,” he drawled, making Liam’s heart skip a beat. Yeah, he knew the only reason why Zayn knew his name was the fact that it was scribbled on his nametag, but it still drove him crazy that Zayn decided to use it every time he came in the shop, instead of ignoring it like most of the customers did.

“Good morning,” Liam replied, waiting for Zayn’s order. Most of the customers arrived at the register with their minds already made, ordering their usual. That wasn’t Zayn. He always took his time to decide and he never ordered the same thing twice. Liam loved that spontaneity.

“I’ll take two of your favorite muffin and two of your favorite coffee, please,” Zayn ordered, smiling to himself while he took out his wallet. _What?_

“E-excuse me, what?” Liam stuttered, completely taken by surprise, his nerves spiking again. It wasn’t really that weird, many customers asked him what was good, but Zayn didn’t ask that. Zayn asked for _his_ favorite. Zayn asked for two of each. What the hell was happening? Did Zayn decide to ask him what his favorite coffee was just to, what, go and drink it with someone else? Was he really going to have to witness that? Was fate really that cruel?

Liam looked around the shop, trying to find whoever was with Zayn, knowing he would find some breathtakingly gorgeous woman waiting for him (or man, because fate can be _that_ cruel), until Zayn pulled his attention back to him. “I’ll take two of your favorite muffin and two of your favorite coffee,” Zayn repeated, and then he pointed at the sign above Liam’s head. “What kind of gentleman shoves his number at a cute guy before at least buying him coffee?” he asked, biting his lip.

Confused and kind of breathless, Liam turned around to look at the sign so fast he knocked a pile of plastic cups to the floor. The cups lay there completely forgotten because he saw red as soon as he read the sign. He was going to kill his coworkers. He was going to go to jail at the tender age of 23 because his coworkers were the worst people in the world and deserved a slow, painful kind of death. Every customer saw that sign. That was the reason behind the giggles and the winks and the numbers and this. _This_. Zayn, beautiful Zayn, perfect Zayn, making fun of him and pretending to be interested. There was no way he was serious. No fucking way. Louis and Harry were so dead. He searched for them with his eyes and found them peeking out of the kitchen door, laughing. They disappeared as soon as they saw Liam looking at them with daggers in his eyes. They better run.

“Um… so…” Zayn’s voice was the only thing that kept him from running after the two traitors. Liam turned around again, head down, shaking, terrified, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t write that, it was… it doesn’t matter, I’m… I wouldn’t… Oh god, this is so stupid…” In his most ridiculous fantasies he imagined himself having the sort of self-confidence his friends had, he imagined himself smiling at Zayn, seducing him, wowing him, finally getting the attention of a beautiful man. Reality was this, though. He was awkward as fuck and his friends sucked and Zayn was surely having a great time laughing at him.

Or so he thought, because when he dared looking at Zayn again, he was not laughing. Much on the contrary, he still had that sweet expression on his face, he was still smiling but there was concern in the frown of his forehead. “Hey,” he tried getting Liam’s attention, maybe trying to get him to stop panicking. “It’s okay,” all of a sudden his hand was on top of Liam’s on the counter, and Liam stopped breathing. His hand was so warm Liam had zero energy to panic all of a sudden, all of his focus was on Zayn’s warm skin and on his kind, beautiful eyes.

Liam shook his head, mortified. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry, my friends are idiots and, and… they must have put you up for this.” There was no other way this gorgeous man would offer him a date or his number or even the time of day. “You don’t have to pretend to be interested, okay? They got their laugh out of this, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, stop apologizing,” Zayn’s fingers actually moved, making his hand not just lay on top of Liam’s. He was actually kind of awkwardly holding his hand and Liam effectively shut up, looking nervously at Zayn. “The only part of what you just said that is true is that your friends are idiots, I’m assuming you didn’t know about the sign. That was so not cool of them.” Yeah, Liam was pretty much dying. There was so much warmth and calm and understanding and _intensity_ in Zayn’s eyes… “No one asked me to do anything, okay? I just thought…” Zayn looked down for a moment and now he was the one looking nervous or mortified or something and Liam was still dying but now he needed to hear the rest of what Zayn was trying to say, so he squeezed his hand a bit, encouraging him. Zayn chuckled and looked back up at him, smiling. “What I’m trying to say is I’ve been, you know, trying to gather the courage to ask you out for ages, but I didn’t even know if you, you know… liked guys? Or were available at all? So today I read the sing and I… I’m sorry, that was stupid and forward of me.”

It took Liam a moment to process what was actually happening. Zayn, beautiful Zayn, amazing Zayn, the most wonderful creature on this earth, was standing in front of him, kinda holding his hand, saying he really wanted to ask him out but he didn’t know if he could. For a moment Liam was pretty sure he was dreaming, maybe he didn’t hear his alarm clock buzzing and he was still in his bed having another one of his fantastic dreams about Zayn. But no. This was real. This was too real. The feeling of his hand in Zayn’s was real. The furious beating of his heart was real. The man in front of him was very real and perfect and he actually tried to ask him out.

Apparently his little freak out was too long, because Zayn finally looked down again and removed his hand, moving backwards, muttering “I’m sorry…”

“No, wait!” Liam stopped him, yelling maybe a tad too loud, making people turn to look at him. “Wait, I…” he took a deep breath and tried to find the courage to do this. He could do this. “I am. I mean… The sign. I didn’t know about it but… What I’m trying to say is I am. Gay. And, you know… Single.” He could feel his cheeks burning, his heart hammering, but he pushed on. “And I like lattes. And chocolate chip muffins,” he confessed, biting his lower lip.

Zayn’s frown disappeared and suddenly there was a bright smile on his lips, one that Liam had never seen before, one that made him tremble because it was just for him. Zayn approached the counter again, reaching out with one hand to take Liam’s again, properly this time. “Perfect. When’s your next break?”


End file.
